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As a young man Vallotton moved from Lausanne to Paris where he joined the Nabis and became almost instantly famous for his woodcuts in daring black and white which were razor sharp, in both a formal and psychological sense. With his no less artistically precise Summer-Women Bathing in a Brick Pool in the Open Air he provoked a scandal at the Salon des Indépendants 1893 and successfully established his reputation as an artist: it managed to caricature perfectly the traditionalist salon and plein-air artists, through Renoir and Seurat all the way to the pseudo-religious Symbolists – not to mention the beautiful ladies of the Third Republic.